Open source printer with refillable ink, no bullshit, accept rolls of papers.
Finally an open source printer ! I dealt with so much stupidity with printers. it warm my heart.
I do have too much joy to practice mandatory critical thinking about the release of a new project. Lets talk about it? i am not the only one to be happy about it, i have no info about the price though :/
Its actually funny that Gta6 came out before this.
Never will i go back to ink cartigage or refillable ink… Those wear off faster than speed of light.
I switched 2 month ago and it’s day and night…
You know, vintage printers offer much the same.
I have an HP 4050DTN from a good quarter century ago that has no DRM of any kind, no tracking dots, no reporting home to the mothership, is eminently repairable, and can accept overstuffed toner cartridges that are advertised to do 20,000 sheets at 5% coverage.
And the toner claim largely bears out. Two degrees later and I’m only on my third cartridge in the machine’s entire life. Last I ran a duty report the sheet count was getting close to 50k. Low 40s, at the very least. So it’s tracking decently close.
Sure, it now needs some parts refreshed. Rollers, fuser, and so forth. After a quarter century of use I would be surprised if something wasn’t starting to go. But parts are still readily available and surprisingly cheap. I mean, I have the parts in, I just haven’t had the time yet to swap them in.
The only downside of kit this old is that networking was an afterthought. Most units will come with USB, DIN-8, serial, and parallel ports, but finding a good JetDirect Ethernet network card - ideally 635n or newer - is difficult and expensive (the 615n bricked itself with distressing regularity, avoid at all costs).
I also have an HP 5000DTN that is of the identical build quality and can do oversized sheets up to 11×17. Beautiful machine in its early-2000s brutalist beigeness.
So if you want HP at their peak of printer glory, long before enshittification set in, hop on over to Wikipedia and consider any LaserJet model first released before 2006-2012.
To fix the networking you could get a dedicated USB print server or a RasPi with CUPS and attach the printer via USB. Probably cheaper than a vintage printer network card.
Yes but JetDirect is still cheaper and better integrated. There is the issue with outdated certificates and max. TLS 1.2 with the print server, but in a home/SOHO environment this should not be a critical security shortfall.
Thanks a lot ! I learned so much things. Thanks for the precise references.
It is a solution but i am not sure the supply will last. It can only dwindle.
Your arguments are sounds and valids. I have another solution to a problem, thanks again !
Get an extra roller kit and fuser kit, and you should be golden for the next two decades. The cartridges aren’t going away any time soon.
Not Open Source hardware or firmware.
License is CC-NC-SA, which fails all formal definitions of Open Source.
Also why are they using a content license for software and hardware? We need to create an online course that teaches people how not to suck at doing foss… and then license that course with a eula, cause that would be so fucking funny.
I disagree. Open source can mean many things, this license permits you to do anything with it, just not selling it.
Only thing is, you have to use the same license when publishing changes, which is normal for almost all open source.
I dont See anything wrong with it and calling it non open source is a bit misleading i think
No they’re right, cc-nc-sa is not open source or freedom respecting.
Edit: I’ll elaborate. The core principles of the free software movement will follow. All other definitions not only do not conflict with this basic definition, but often expand on it with additional rights expectations. The Four Freedoms:
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The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
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The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1).
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Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
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The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
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The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Restrictions on commercial use are a suppression on freedoms 2 and 3, and notably (at least as far as I’m aware), none of the licenses to come out of the FSF have commercial restrictions.
And in the Open-Source definition, it’s literally in rule 1:
1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
I agree that its weird to use a content license.
But in what way do your listed requirements not apply to this project and license?
You can do whatever you want, besides makind money with it or sharing/changing it without attribution.
As far as i know hardware licenses are a bit strange still?
But i just dont unterstand your point and would like to
@Augmented1207@feddit.org @AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net their point is that commercial restrictions go against both the Free Software Movement and the Open Source Movement as layed out by both of their definitions and it’s harmful for several reasons (see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freedom-to-run.html)
sit with the thought for a moment, what if the GNU operating system or the Linux kernel, etc… had a commercial restriction on them, there would be more complications then, and the physical copies made by other distributions wouldn’t be made, and so on
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Curious how 3D beat 2D by, what, 10 years?
Ease really. Once the patents expired it was fairly simply to make a 3d printer, which is essentially a hot nozzle squirting plastic. It’s more akin to a pen plotter
An inkjet printer is significantly more complex. Even if you know how it works you essentially need a semiconductor level fab to make the printhead. That’s why all these projects just reverse engineer hp cartridges. Literally every inkjet printer patent could’ve expired 10 years ago and it wouldn’t change the engineering and manufacturing challenges
3D is actually 100% open source.
This still uses proprietary cartridges.
LETS GOOOOOO I have a small print shop and I only use Linux and it SUCKS
Unless you’re printing receipts in A4 width or some shit, who the hell wants to print on roll paper
Engineers, architects, Egyptian mummies.
I would, when I’m printing out a D&D map. Taping pages together isn’t the worst, but only needing to line up prints in one direction would be great.
But it’s optional, either way. Odds are I’d have sheets in most of the time and switch to roll for that, specifically, but having the option is nice, it also lets me print smaller without wasting a whole sheet.
What is actually bad about this other than it being new to you?
Roll paper isn’t ideal, proprietary cartridges are not great. I applaud the effort, but it’s all the easiest parts of the printer opened while the hard parts are left to capitalism.
Roll paper in my experience hasn’t been that bad, I think wanting non proprietary cartridges is not feasible at the moment and we can use ink bottles in them anyways so it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Its a much better very reasonable attempt that so far nobody else has really done so its worth supporting by reason to being much better than what is available at the moment.
You can use ink bottles for a number of refills before they foul or fail; refilling is fine, but those piezo heads don’t last forever. Wanting nonproprietary inkjet heads will never be feasible, which is honestly why I had discounted the whole project. An inkjet is a wrapper of barely complex tech around a super complex printead.
It’s like saying you’re going to make an open source car, they going well, except the motor, you’re going to need an engine out of a 1997 honda-civic to make it work.
As long as the heads are availalbe from HP, and they don’t go nuts on pricing or some soul in china is willing to sell copies it’ll work. That’s just not the normal far for and open device.
It’s not new. It’s old.
I guess none of you are old enough to remember fax machines. There’s a reason we got rid of roll paper, it fucking sucks
I’m not saying it is new technology I am saying new to you, who now says you have used it before.
What is actually bad about this? From my experience the curl is at worst a barely noticeable affect on the paper and is less of an issue if you go through paper quick, for the people that don’t care you can use flat sheets for this printer as well.
Have you ever used roll paper? In what use cases did you find it equivalent or superior to flat? Any problems with curling paper, see any paper waste from the core as it runs low?
Have you ever wrapped presents with rolled paper? Notice any issues with it? Think it would work well for a pile of documents?
Sounds like you’re the one arguing from ignorance here
Yes, I never found it superior except in the case of space saving protective conveinance, just not an issue in my experience, plus it sounds like the printer offers sheets as an option anyways. I’ve seen curled paper with and without coming from rolls, obviously from rolls more but its never been an issue to me. As for core waste, hopefully we are recycling our paper stack coverings and rolls.
In my experience the curling has not been an issue with wrapping paper, I just wrap it in a way where its not an inconvenience, smaller sheet would be even easier to keep flat when its sitting on something flat and with stapled together in a corner anyways.
No
The curl is really bad, like unusably bad, especially towards the end of the roll.
Sounds like it depends on the person then I’ve not had it be that bad in my experience, its not like that’s the only option anyways.
You didn’t use a fax machine where it was humid I guess
Because it van print A4 ans A3 without too much mechanics
The perfect color for a printer doesnt exi…
spoiler
I’m interested. Any info on how much it will cost?
Not yet hopefully soon
The hardware is pretty trivial. The cartridges, which are the most problematic part are HP. This is so underwhelming.
All I want is one laid-off and bitter engineer to get drunk one night and say “fuck this” and open source solve everyone’s problems with the abusable HP shit.
I don’t even care if it’s dot matrix all over again.
Problem is that those cartridge nozzles that deposit tiny droplets of ink precisely when and where you want them are pretty close to magic.
They’re about as easy to manufacture as microchips, and they’re also the one part of the inkjet printer that you absolutely need to be on point if you want it to print right.
I’m surprised we don’t have open source laser printers though, that’s still hard but should be doable, if you can source the material for the rollers and figure out the led strip that charges it?
it’s still a good start . Also aftermarket cartridges exists.
oh, and also they offer refill kits.
HP carts have the printhead included, disposable, so quality will degrade fast with refilling. Epson/brother and some Canon have permanent printheads which will last orders of magnitude longer. If the cart/printhead is still going to be propietary, epson/brother printheads, which are readily available, and which can be setup pretty easily in a CISS configuration would have been way better. The project is really bad. The fact that they use paper rolls is also dumb. Are you really going to cut every single sheet? Rolls make sense for large format printing. Epson/brother with aftermarket CISS are the way to go, especially because you can get actual Epson ink in bottles for refilling, the ones used in their ecotank line, super cheap.
it also takes normal sheet paper. but it has an integrated cutter so the rolls enable A4 or A3 (us letter or 11x17), or any other length, or continuous from the same source.
permanent printheads are not really any better from a longevity standpoint. they still do degrade and need replacement. more often than not, that replacement either doesn’t exist, hasn’t been manufactured since the printer was a new model, or is prohibitively expensive and/or only available from random third-parties.
the last ink tank + separate printhead setup that you could very easily get tanks and printheads for was some old canon printers from 25+ years ago. the printheads were in a removable caddy, and that caddy was sold in stores with and alongside ink tanks.
printheads also need to be used, regularly. once you go a few weeks without printing, every day that you don’t increases your chance those printheads will never print again. when the printhead is in the consumable, it gets replaced far easier and automatically on a cartridge swap. yes, that is at the expense of higher cost new consumables.
we’ve had to bin three brothers, two hp, an epson, and a canon over the twenty years because of bad and unreplaceable printheads. coincidentally we’re currently using two salvaged hp printers that use the same cartridges as this ‘open’ printer, use refilled consumables, and the printers are old enough they don’t scream and refuse to print if the color is empty–we can use and print black only.
the problem here with this project is they don’t have their own printheads and cartridges, which means some of their code was either lifted from hp printers or reverse engineered; and they rely on hp as the only source for new consumables and printheads. hp would be very hostile to this project, so i hope they fully documented their entire process of development and are ready for the inevitable lawsuit.
I’m waiting for a machine to appear with an operating system with an source code, it would be funny
No more frustrating blockages like: “Cannot print in black because the yellow is empty.”
I think they’re trying to seduce me
Doesn’t that happen because of legal requirements? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
I don’t think that’s a legal requirement. Many printers don’t do MICs.
Is there a list of the ones that don’t?
Lemme tell you it is working
Now do a laser printer
License is extremely sus
Aren’t printers pretty restricted due to needing to have surveillance and anti-counterfeit features? Is this legal at scale?
The counterfeit features from my understanding are just matching one simple dot pattern. That could be included in the firmware here as well.
In their discord server the open printer staff said they explicitly aren’t including thst kind of stuff.
OK, that’s kind of a big deal
I don’t actually know but I imagine it’s all voluntary. It seems like kind of an endless tail chase to constantly limit anything that could feasible be used to commit a crime. Actual counterfeiting with any success requires some pretty specialized shit. Honestly if this printer could be configured to meet those specifics them more power to them. End of the day though I wouldn’t imagine this being the gateway to massive expansions in the counterfeit market.
I should clarify, it’s more of a justification for tracking features and market protectionism (like allowing only 4 brands of printer) than an actual issue.
Still doesn’t atop them from regulating 3d printers like crazy
Those regulations are silly. It doesn’t stop you from using your 3D printer to print a 3D printer that has no restrictions
I think the feds just asked printer manufacturers nicely
